The Danish Boy
by caudelac
Summary: An autobiographical account by the one who currently goes by the name Christine DeChagny. Stranger than you dreamt it. Genderfk. In progress.
1. Of The One Called Madame de Chagny

There's really no point to this, I imagine. No possible good can come of it. It would be a different matter if I am not who I am now, a great lady with a great station, caring for the heir of a great man. If I had come to a low end, as I deserved... as I should have... perhaps this act, the confession of my tale to paper would be worth the risk. However, it would also be, I think, less necessary. For underneath who I am now, my title, my finery and my excellent name, I am still there. 

This is the story of my salvation. How I, a miserable, cursed thing, fell even lower into darkness and was lifted up again. Why on earth I should threaten my happiness by creating a record of my ignominious tale, I do not know. There is no other way the secret could be found out, as all who know the deep truth of it are stayed by love of my husband, our son, and myself or else they are dead. 

I will begin by recording my name, written without the little lie that has validated it for the last seven years. At my birth, I was called Christian Richars Daae. This is the only incident surrounding my birth of any interest, scandalous or human. For the sake of completeness, I will mention that it occurred in a little village in Denmark, that my father was a violinist who carried me to Italy, Austria and France, and that he earned a living for a time playing the organ in various churches. I learned my letters at his knee, and I learned of music in the vaulted cathedrals of Europe, my little voice consumed in the thunder of the choir. 

The defining moment of my life is something of a blur, and I could not tell you where or when it happened, or what role in it my father had. But at some point before I was much older than ten, it was determined that my career belonged to the church, and wholly in music. At least, that much was explained to me later, when I understood that I no longer looked like other men, at the defining point below the belt. I was very dubious at the time, but the result of the procedure was as promised-- I retain a fine, fair soprano, I have never grown facial hair, though only much care keeps my body from running to the plump. Forgive me if my telling is somewhat muddled, but these are not things one speaks about-- fantastic things! Bizarre! I would not know shameful until much, much later still, for although I knew the term 'Castrato', it was never uttered with anything but politeness or amazement. At least, not while I was with the choirs. 

Nevertheless, I do recall that it was after that, my father and I came to France, where I was installed in yet another choir, same as usual. Only there, my father left me forever, although he remains still, under a stone in the churchyard. I have visited occasionally, no longer fearing recognition, as that church has been long abandoned by it's clergy, and is kept by a single, half-deaf groundskeeper, who came long after the flight of the young and lovely castrato called Christian. The priests delighted in that name at the time, Churchmen being almost as superstitious as sailors. The main difference is that they will only subscribe to the superstition when it suits their purposes and desires. 

And now I have given over to blasphemy, as well as scandal. Well, should my eventual damnation come out of these sheets, I should like it to be as complete as utterly possible. I only hope that if it comes, it comes after my death, and that of my husband, possibly in such a time and manner as it will not hurt our child. To whose needs I must now attend, though I imagine I will have to address his existence, possibly out of sequence with the rest. Given what I have already confessed, I admit to the curiosity of it, but I assure you-- all has a very simple answer. I have found in my life, that this is, save in matters of the heart or of the soul, always the case. 


	2. She Persists in Her Madness

It has been more than a week since I first made confession unto this little notebook. I keep it locked up in my jewel-box, though I feel perhaps I ought to find some place which is not likely to fall victim to a burglary, should such a thing occur. Raoul finds that I keep a diary now charming, and he would never dare to pry. I do not know what he would think of this-- my writing my own history-- if he knew... would he tear the words, and burn my little book? Would he confront me, ask what I mean to do, writing the tale of our ignominy? It is a thing he forgets, even looking at me, every day. For him, I am only Christine, for him, I have ever, only been Christine. With Christian, he would not know what to do, I fear. 

But I have resolved, you see, to commit to this history, and I fear turning away from it as much as continuing. Let me then return to the narrative and away from these contemplations; maddening mind-games, as easy as they are to play. 

As I said, before the death of my father, I had been installed in a choir in France. In this town, the Vicomte de Chagny was my friend and playmate. We met on a day he was out with his governess, on which he rescued the scarf I was wearing when it blew away into the sea. I gave him a kiss in thanks, and that is how we met. I still find it terribly romantic. 

My father played the violin and told us stories, and Raoul, dear, sweet lad that he was, called me little Lotte, after the girl in them. The matter of gender was never, you see addressed. We were far too young for such matters, and I... I could not have answered such a question one way or the other. I was a child of the Angel of Music, so said my father, and angels are sexless and beautiful, lonely and brilliant. He told us storied of the Angel of Music-- wonderful tales, full of promises. But Raoul, to acquit him early, never suspected anything of my true nature at that time, and, to his credit, I believe he heard the name Christine, no matter what was said to him. I know he believed me a girl, even then. 

After the death of my father, I stayed with the choir only until I was sixteen. I had a horror of blades, and never allowed the monks to cut my hair, so, when it came upon me to leave, it seemed quite natural to do so disguised as a woman. And where else should a child without home, or family, or prospects go? To Paris, of course, and the great Opera Houses, to seek one's fortunes. It was a very short time, considering the excellency of my training, before I had obtained a position of a chorus girl at _The_ Opera house, and had arranged lodgings with an excellent lady I called Mamma Valerius, who had known my father when we were still travelling, and who I remembered quite fondly as living now in Montmartre. She remembered my father, and that he had a child, though the woman was quite old by this time, and did not remember what sort of child it was. She recalled only my voice, and that, for reasons which you know, had not at all changed! 

I made few friends at the Opera really: I was close with the daughter of matron who kept the boxes, a wonderful woman called Madame Giry. Her little daughter Meg was and has been my faithful companion and friend, and her devotion to me and to my family is complete. And no small wonder, she has given to myself and my husband the greatest gift a couple could ask for: our son, Richars. She is named god-mother of the boy, and only we three know the secret of his origins. When I say that she is faithful in this matter, know that she considers me the true mother, and herself only the vessel for the love that Raoul and I share. The sweet, wonderful girl. Had I been whole, had there not been Raoul, had... oh, any number of things not happened as they did, who knows what life might have been like!? Do you ever dream like that, sweet Meg? Perhaps it would shame you to know that I have, on occasion. But I am a happy woman, happy in my family, in my friends, and in my circumstances. 

Why then, do I write this? Why do I risk throwing it all away upon the chance of discovery of this hard evidence? 

Because what of my life has not been a great risk, for fear of what might be discovered beneath my skirts; the mask I wear. 

And again, there is that, a thing which has not been spoken of save in shushed tones since it happened, a thing talked of so rarely and so quietly, a thing so monstrous and so amazing that I am occasionally tempted to think myself mad, my own memories a terrible delusion! I remember it all clearly, but as one remembers a nightmare. But Raoul was there and Meg was there, and occasionally, I can coax one of them to drop some hint that I am not, in fact insane, that I remember what I remember truly. I wish that was more comforting to me than it is. I wish that... oh, confound what I wish! Here it is: I am writing this confession to write about Erik, and to tell what happened; the curious tale of that horrible monster who was my kindred soul, and whom, I pray, is mercifully destroyed. I say kindred, yes, I have written it! This script is for Erik, in whatever hell he burns or heaven he sings, and I think that it is some still-lingering shade of him that compels me now to write these cursed, terrible, condemning lines. 

I tell this story, I believe, to exorcise him from me, once and for all. 


	3. An Interlude, Concerning Discipline

I forced myself to put down the book last time, although I knew that to cease would drive the thoughts from my mind. Perhaps that was my purpose, to forget what I had written, and had promised to write... no matter. I shall dispense with trepidation now, as it is clear that I shall not escape... the subject returns to my mind at the oddest times. Thrice over the past week-- while in the carriage with my husband, taking Richars on a pic-nic in the country, playing with the darling babe before the fire, and, most lately, in the rue des gres between the haberdashers and the dressmaker's, as I looked through the shop window at the loveliest of gowns, and my reflection. Treacherous wine silks, the betrayal of pure white brocade! I thought of masks, you see... masks. And Carnival only a month, or a little more (I never do pay too much attention to the calendar) away! 

I hate _Mardi Gras_, I hate the whole idea of it. The only thing I like about Lent is that it is easy to keep my figure trim under the banner of piety. But I loathe the principle. As for _Mardi Gras_ itself, and the 'gaiety' of Carnival, I hate it as much as Hallow'een, if not the more. People pretending to be ghosts and angels. People playing at disguises who really have no idea what it is like... and what if I were to go as myself, on one of these dressing occasions? 

No, no, do not think of it, Christine. Christian. Damn! 

I have stared for five minutes at the curse written upon the page, and at what I have written, the page itself. I am not telling my tale, and the tale is what matters. Not what I have done to-day and yesterday, not what the face of my little boy looks like as he plays upon my coverlet with a stuffed, lop-eared bunny-rabbit that darling Meg brought for him last week. He is so beautiful, so complete. With his nose bunched up like that, he really does resemble me. The sweet little thing. 

This is not a diary, this is a confession. I would do well to remember that... 

Discipline. Discipline learned is the first thing to go. Do I sing now? Ironically, only in the choir. I do not even attend the Opera, save the _Comique_. And that, only very rarely.

_Discipline._ And really, to dispense with the prattle. Discipline... of my eating, of actions, of voice... it really did become second nature to me, working in the Paris Opera, a chorus girl with a bit of talent and... 

Luck, perhaps. Or a dream which could be fed, by the right illusion. The Angel of Music. How did he know!? 

Intuition, perhaps. How do we know anything? The world comes to us in the forms it will wear, and what can we do, really, but play the forms which we are given? 

And to make of them what we will. 


	4. Of the Name and the Man's Voice

I have gone away for an hour, and now I have returned, fresh, to resume my _tale_. And with no interruption from the day-to-day, now. 

I cannot say if I was _happy_, at the Opera, before it happened, but I was content, yes, and I felt I think very secure. I sang passably in the midst of the great trained voices of Paris, and, of course, that blowsy Spanish harridan La Carlotta, who domineered the Opera like a fat white hen in a hen-house full of piping chicks. I did not sing as I had in the choir, for, as I have said: where was God in the Opera house? I think, too, I did not really want anyone to look too closely at the little Danish Chorus Girl. My hair grew down my back, so that I could plait it, and my voice shrank to the right size for a lesser middle soprano among a flock of the same, and the husky altos and contraltos, and the strutting second tenors, the robust baritones, the menacing basses. 

But never mind that. My voice had been trained for the choirs of God, and for God alone I sang. Perhaps too for my father's spirit, a little. But God's place is not the house of the Opera; that is reserved for human beings, and fallen angels. I needed something else, I knew not what. I knew only that I was small, I was unseen, I was content. And then one day, while I sat in my dressing room, I heard the most adorable, wonderful voice, singing a lovely aria. I recognised it right away as one of my own parts, though lowered to fit a most magnificent tenor, a tenor of which I could have hardly dreamed! A tenor that, perhaps, I think now, could have been my own, some day... ah, never mind that either. I am not a poet; I tell you: the voice was lovely, the loveliest thing I had ever heard in my little life. I rose from my little seat and looked about in the hall, down the dressing rooms-- but once outside of my room I could no longer hear it. Terribly distraught, I returned to my room... only to find that the voice was singing still, had continued! It seemed to swallow the room whole! Dumbfounded and dumb, I sat in my chair once more and listened, I listened for what seemed like a lifetime, and all that while the voice sang to me (I fancied!), and all the while I dreamed wide awake, I lost myself and found myself, I thought myself transformed! 

I scarcely knew that the voice had stopped singing when it said-- _he_ said, for the voice was assuredly male!-- "Sing with me, Christine, sing your part, if you please!" 

I gave a start, shocked out of my reverie. 

"But who are you? Where are you?" I exclaimed, sitting straight up, peering all around, under my little table. What a silly thing I must have looked, peering and stretching like that! 

The voice paused then spoke again, so musically, as poets must dream of speaking, "Erik. Call me Erik. And I am here. For you." 

I opened my mouth to ask something else, but then the voice... Erik, he began to sing again. And I really could do nothing but sing with him, _alongside_ him, really, and the result was a harmony that I had never heard in the choirs of God, that had never soared in any vaulted cathedral. His voice teased mine forth, and I remembered a talent I had almost forgotten. Talent, after all, had cut manhood from me, and made me into its instrument. Here, in the room with the angelic voice-- the Angel's voice, I think, the idea had entered my head already-- it for the first time occurred to me that Christine Daae could be a mighty instrument, that she could be great, and that, perhaps, _this_ was what God had meant when he instructed His Servants, the brothers and fathers of the Church, to create her. My dear friend, my imaginary reader, perhaps you have known a moment such as that I then experienced, a moment in which all of your life seems to have happened solely to present you with the Now, with This... when it all is all right, and makes sense, because you are where you are when you are. That is what I felt, accompanying that massive voice with my growing one. Christian to Christine, I made sense. I was myself, One Self. 

For there could only be two in the duet that we sang: There was Erik, and there was Me. 

I long for that feeling, you know. I have not known it... I have forgotten it, even now. Remembering that moment... if only it could have been like that forever! If only beauty were not so often a facade, a pretty carnival mask for something awful, something dark, something so vile... What am I saying, if only! If only I were not so happy now, and this were an easy thing to write. If only every word did not feel like a stab... 

I did say there would be no more of this... this prattle. But I cannot bring myself to strike the words out. No, I will not remove a word, not a single word, I cannot bear to see a note of it stricken. Perhaps I hope for a little absolution, in the event that these words are uncovered... selfishly, I hope that my judge will see my anguish and look on me with pity, when he-- she-- whomever! Whatever! Reads how I gloried, how I suffered, the depth of my loss and my redemption, and as strange as my tale is, how unnatural and uncanny, that they will see, beneath it all, the human being behind the monster. 

Do I mean myself by that, or do I mean him? 

Perhaps I mean all of us, every last one. 


	5. A Great Pack of Muddle!

I really can't say anything else about what it was like... how lovely, really lovely it was. I can't. I'm no poet, I never have been. I don't have the words. It is nothing I can share, anyway... one understands, or one doesn't, there is nothing in-between.   
  
Isn't that a funny thing to say? Nothing in-between. I myself am nothing but a whole lot of in-betweens. Oh, if only everything could be so one-way, or the other! I hate, I detest, I do so loathe everything that is only half! Should it surprise you that occasionally, yes, I hate even myself? I think it should not, whomever you are. I think that, if you are a discerning reader, you should have figured at least that by now.   
  
In the meantime, something completely awful had happened! And by awful, I mean wonderful, and by wonderful, I mean awful. Oh! Do you see now how wretched it is, when things cannot be one thing and not something else, contradictory? Do you not see how muddling, at the end of it? You will soon, I promise. You see, what happened was this-- two things, really.   
  
First thing was that I triumphed. I mean, I came out of my shell at the opera, and that, that! Was my undoing. Oh, had I been content merely to share my singing with Erik alone, in the dressing room, I might have been happier longer, I may have avoided all the horrible things to come... oh yes, I am happy now, but must one really endure such horrible-- horrible!-- things before...   
  
Well yes, I suppose one must. I don't regret anything. Oh hell. See what I mean, again? This is unreadable muddle!  
  
I wish only to deliver the facts, as they occurred. First, yes, I sang out loud, and solo, and I was received tremendously. The second thing that happened what that Raoul returned, and he heard me. I don't know, at that point, if there is anything that could have stopped him loving me. Erik thought not, that is certain, but I don't think he made it any better. No, I rather think he damned himself, because of Raoul. I think he rather pushed me into Raoul's arms, I think he drove me beyond caring of what might happen when Raoul uncovered my secret. I think that what followed is, in fact, entirely his fault.   
  
Oh, perhaps not entirely. I did nothing to discourage Raoul, after all. I think that I loved him then... oh, I must have. Which is not to imply I do not love him now. Only that from time to time it pales a little, when I think of poor, unhappy Erik. Oh, what muddle!  
  
But I must tell of what happened, what followed. How I, a young not-man with a high voice in a skirt became one of the most celebrated voices in Paris, and how caught I was between two jealous, frightened, temperamental men, both crying at me and clutching as if their hearts would break... the one offering me a love as pure and as innocent as anything out of a fairy tale, and the other one offering me a glory as dark and as fraught with magic as the same. Did I really have a choice, or did these men only fancy that I did, all the while moving the wheels and intriguing about me, assuring that little enough I did would be of any consequence whatever?   
  
If I lied, Raoul would surely have seen it, and determined I loved him but lived in some kind of fear... and I did!  
  
But he proved to me I was not mad, when he heard Erik's voice from the outside of my room. I could never be furious with him for that, so relieved was I! No matter what he supposed Erik was. I did not consciously mislead him on that point... I had not thought, you know, of my Angel as a man, with a man's desires, and a man's... covetousness, until far, far too late. 


	6. Of Death and Other Illusions

After all this time, I cannot recall how it happened. I mean, how Erik and I got from singing to Raoul. I recall that he accused me... he insisted I loved another, that I sang for someone else. Now, and this I distinctly remember, that I replied, "How can you say that... _when I sing only for you!_" 

I remember that, because when I said it, I felt a twinge, very small, of guilt, like I was lying. I thought, in an instant, that in the middle of my singing to please him, I sang, also, for myself-- My Self, my one, complete self. I think the part of me that was Christian drank up the praise and the applause and the look on that fat Italian strumpet's face! While Christine... Christine, I think, was terribly in love with Erik, the way young girls are with their fathers, and the men or constructs that come to take their father's places. I think that the part of me that would become Christine was well in love with the priests at the chapel, even, and I think it was her that wept when I left them...

It occurs to me that there is more I must add to this tale, that comes before, but I think I must not write it now. Erik waits, he has waited too long. I was very, very good, at keeping him waiting... the poor, poor creature. He thought he knew all, the thought himself a flame, consumed and consuming...

I don't know what I thought I knew. At any rate, he let me go that evening, but it got worse and worse. He demanded I give my love to no earthly thing, lest he return to Heaven. Well, how hard did I have to try to agree to that? I knew well enough that I could not marry, no matter how Raoul begged and scratched and pleaded, nor how I longed to listen. I assured him so violently, but the Angel was implacable. Later we... I suppose we quarreled. I think he heard the note in my voice, for his became very like a man's, jealous, ardent. He _whined_, which fell strangely on my ears. And then he grew terrible.

"I can see straight through to your heart, Christine," He informed me in a terrible voice, one evening, "I know where you go, what you do. I-- I alone!-- guard you while you sleep, remember that... I could take my protection away. Perhaps you do not need me anymore..."

"No!" I am sure I cried, though in response to which part, I cannot say.

"No." It said, savoring the words so audibly that it made me shiver. "You do need me. You need me to give you your wings. You need me to make you great... There is something I can give you that nothing on earth can. You wait until tonight, Christine! I will be there myself. You wait..."

And then I knew he had gone. I sat shivering for a very long time. And then, when I went on that night, oh! How embarrassed I was, nearly. I was terrible, worse than when I was in the chorus. I think I was frightened, terribly frightened by everything. And then Carlotta came on too, and... well, the incident is well enough documented. I must highlight it with only a comment or two: That beneath my costume, Christian was perfectly delighted, as the voice of the Prima Donna came out in the horrible croaking of a big fat frog. Oh! How perfectly marvelous! Oh! How she deserved it!

Outwardly, I quivered with terror. And when the chandelier came crashing down, surrounding us with murder and screams, well! I knew, without knowing, and I fled to my dressing room. What a terrible power he has, I remember thinking to myself, in the moment before he called to me, beckoning me to believe in him and come, through the mirror... does it seem improbable, that I could walk through solid glass and emerge on the other side, that I would walk, as if in a dream into the centre of the earth where He dwelt in solitude? My Angel in Exile, I thought, as I went down.

I cannot describe the skeleton's hand that gripped me, the creature that appeared, frightening and terrible in it's mask. It guided me on. I thought it Death, come to make me an Angel too, and join me with my tenor half. The hands were just so cold, and the smell I knew from the graveyards at chapels. Oh, I am no stranger to death. Ah, deliverance! I fell into a swoon.

The next I knew, Death had lifted me across the back of a horse-- I knew the horse! I had fed him often enough, he was stolen by the opera ghost... it didn't disturb me so much, to think that the opera ghost was Death Himself. It did not matter. I would soon be in heaven...

I watched demons dance as I lay, still as anything, across Cesar's great back, as I was handed into a little boat and drawn across a lake, which all know lies beneath the Opera. I felt no fear, just a great and terrible peace. I dazed, off and on, coming in and out of the clear as I was taken to a room, a room filled with flowers. I thought of funerals.

"For me?" I said in a small voice, to the Death that stood before me. I think I supposed him still an Agent of the Voice, of my Angel, my Tenor-half.

"All of it, of course." Said Death, and horror dawned, a little, but not fully. "Are you afraid? You oughtn't be. There is nothing can harm you here."

And then I cried out, for his utterance bore a melody that was known to me. I knew it better than my own.

"You!" I said, "You!"

"Even I!" It said, curiously triumphant, and yet, full of misery, of pain, and of woe... it seemed to me that the triumph was written on the mask he wore, and all else seeped out from beneath it, a great pool of black emotions dripping onto the floor and creeping towards my slippers. "I am Erik! I no angel, or ghost, but a man, a poor, pitiful man..." And he knelt at my feet in an attitude of prayer, which I had seen just so many priests and things adopt in my day, and from just such a vantage.

Erik laid his head upon my knees and he wept, but there was immense joy in the weeping. Joy, and great, wonderful melody. I may have been transported by it... I know I sighed in harmony with his tears, and he wept still the harder. I think he was really in love with his misery, his tragedy, and the sheer hopelessness of It All.

I think I knew precisely how he felt. I touched the corner of his mask, and he jerked away. His eyes were red fire in the holes cut for them.

"There is one thing," He amended, and I followed his meaning, "You shall never, never! See the face behind this mask. Do not try! Do not touch..."

Could I refuse? I, who could never be touched? For whom every play at caress was mockery, fake-- yes, play? Why, my parts upon the stage at the opera knew more of the true mysteries of love than I. I knew only sordid things, the worship of priests, and the things a heart can whisper in the darkness, devoid of hands, and yes, of faces.

"I promise." I said, and he cried out! He cried out a note so beautiful, and so startling, that I was carried by it out of the cavern, out into the stars. My body, unable to endure these transports of the soul, why, it fainted dead away.


	7. What she dreamed of, dredged from memory

To thoroughly complete my damnation, I must tell of what occurred when I first arrived in Paris, before I found my Mamma Valerius, and my position in the Opera. I don't know why I think of it now... I think perhaps I dreamed of it, when I lay unconscious in the cavern below the Opera, at the mercy of the masked monster with the angel's voice who had led me quite away.   
  
I have said that Mamma lived in Montmarte. Can you imagine what a place it was, for a youth just out of the country, carried away by everything they saw? Oh, how terrifying and beautiful! I had a little money-- it was stolen, I'll admit it, and from the church too!-- and I took a room. To do that, I had to be Christian for a little while.   
  
I spent a week, in fact, as Christian, before seeking out my father's old friend, perched on the brink between two frightening lives. I sought work as a laborer, and found a little factory employment, though it did not go very well, due to the extreme delicacy of my features, the softness of my hands, and, to be perfectly frank-- my temperament was and is simply not suited for such drudgery! When I left at the end of my week, no one was sorry, save perhaps some of the ladies who worked in the other part of the factory, who liked to look at my hairless face, my long eyelashes, and sigh.  
  
Why is it, that women favour pretty men, who resemble women themselves? Is it some subtle Sapphic inclination, manifesting itself? Or is everyone drawn somewhere to the middle, to the perfect, androgynous form that could be either? For I can tell you, I have never had any lack of admirers from either sex, particularly when in the guise of Christian. I think this is another reason, why in the end, I fled to the comfort of Christine. To be hated or ignored by one gender is better than to be leered at by both, particularly when, as I thought at the time, I could or would capitulate to none.   
  
Raoul is, now that I think of it, not a little pretty himself, but I think that no one could ever mistake him for a woman. Oh, he is very masculine, in features and manner. Nor, as I have implied, and would like to make very, very clear, is he a sodomite. Oh, that is a coarse, horrible word for a lady to know! But it is no lady who tells you this, it is one who has known sodomites in its time, and can tell the difference.   
  
The insatiable, nosy reader will persist, I am sure, and want to know then how the honorable Vicomte and his lady wife consummate their union. I will tell you: We make love, and that is all you need know. I am a confessor, not a pornographer, and airing the habits of the marital chamber is pornographic. I would no more discuss its secrets than a priest would the holy mysteries only he is permitted to know. No, that matter will remain between the honorable Vicomte and his lady wife, and you lot can, in the words of the horrible creature who inhabits her from time to time, frankly bugger off.   
  
Oh, what a horrible, horrible thing to have written! I assure you, it is only to steel myself for the horrible things to come.   
  
While I lived for that week, you see, I met a man whom, at first, I supposed to be gentle, while taking my evening meal in a tavern. I should like to say that I smelled him out from the start, but I did not, not completely. You see, while there were certain attitudes of worship assumed by those priest which raised me which were less than proper, they were, at large, worshipful, and very harmless, in my opinion. I thought, at first, that this gentleman was like that. I hadn't the slightest inkling of what a true sodomite was like, and what they would want of me... and it must be kept in mind, that though the gelding had stolen certain things from me, there are others which remain reasonably effective. Desire is one, and I was a fey sixteen, and a young boy besides. And oh, the gentleman was handsome enough. Not that, had I remained intact, I would have been a sodomite! Never! Not when I learned what they were like... But I knew from the priests, that a man paying attention to a young boy would not mind if he was incomplete in places. I repeat, that I had no inkling of the full extent why. Oh, you unknown snoop, you spy, you are likely profoundly gentle, and you do not know that of which I speak. Rejoice in your fortunate innocence! I lost mine swiftly.   
  
For I went with the gentleman into the city, and a quaint townhouse, where he taught me what a sodomite was. Those lessons made a deep impression on me, I must say, for he kept me by his side for a solid three days, and he introduced me to some other sodomites, whose faces-- oh, their faces! Look, my hand, holding the pen, is trembling. I do not remember all their faces. I cannot! I remember their music, their laughter, high and false, their lewd jests, their fey camaraderie, their excessive polish and oiled hair. I remember their well-kept nails and their careful smiles, their falsity and their contempt and their filthy lusts and their snide self-hatred. But their faces? Only a few, only briefly. Oh, how I shake! Oh my...   
  
There, I have had a small tonic and feel a little more settled. Every now and then, once I had escaped and fled, fled into Christine, sought out Mamma Valerius and buried myself in her matronly bosom as a suffering child, I think I saw a glimmer of them in the Opera, laughing in their boxes under the guise of proper gents. I know too, that there were certain of the tenors and so forth that engaged in that lewd, secret pastime, of habitual sodomy! I shan't name names. But they did not know me, for Christine had everyone completely snowed. I can safely say, once I had adopted her for true, wrapped in her as snugly as anything, no sodomite looked twice at me, save perhaps to admire my frock!  
  
It was this gentleman, however, a Monsieur Q., I shall call him only, that took me first to the house of the Opera. And thusly, showed to me my future, as far as I could then dream. There are so many things, Oh, many! Stranger than dreams, aren't there? In life?   
  
I think I dreamed again of him, that man and his oiled smile and his twittering, disgusting friends, the first time I went to the cavern under the Opera, laying there in a swoon. I think, in retrospect, it should have served as a warning, that-- For Monsieur Q. had shown me about things which are not always what they seem, and about horrors and masks, for the very first. Whatever good that warning would have done me then!  
  
Aha! I am almost relieved that Richars is crying, and I must needs quit this labour, and attend him at once! 


	8. When She Woke

I woke in a bed of satin and velvet, my ears flooded with the airs of angels as filtered through canopies of spider-web lace. I stirred a little, feeling oddly light, and realised slowly that I was not clad as I had been. I was dressed in something white and filmy, like an underdress, and-- nothing else. I shivered, suddenly aware of the cool damp of the cavern about me.

The music stopped with a jarring, dissonant chord. my breath ceased in my breast for a long moment as all I heard was the sighing of some stale breeze in the flickering lamplight, and the soft click of heels on stone. And then it stopped.

For a while we stared at each other, the masked figure at the end of the bed, framed in the black lace of the curtains and myself, aware of my own terror and a dim sense of betrayal. The expression I felt seemed mirrored in the blankness of his domino, and in the twist of his lip, the half I could see. His eyes were not fire now, but black pits in the mask-holes, empty and yawning, like hope feels far from home. I knew the feeling. Curiously, I suddenly felt the urge to laugh, to laugh and laugh and never stop laughing. I sat up on my elbows.

"Stranger than you dreamt it?" I sang at him. He clasped his hands over his ears and staggered back,

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" He wailed, and I sat up a little straighter. Really! Such pointless Tenor dramatics.

"Christine..." He whimpered. But by now, I knew no fear.

"A castrato." I said.

He winced, and cringed away from the bed, almost huddled with his back to me. Any lingering tension or anxiousness I might have felt melted away at that instant, replaced by something curiously like pity. I knelt forward on the bed, and reached out to touch his shoulder, but with my hand just a few moments away the Angel wheeled again. He had removed his mask. 


	9. Of Cowardace

Forgive me for my brevity last-- I had wished to go into the tale with no interruption from the day-to-day, but did not have a moment to write a word more than I left before the day-to-day interrupted me. Terrible, wonderful mundanity! Would I trade a moment of the utter, utter peaceful bliss I know for some eternity of the unknown and exciting? I do not think so.

But then, why do I feel compelled to relive these things, otherwise so utterly forgotten? I think perhaps it is some unexpurgiated perversity in my nature, and that is all. I shall banish it utterly with these words, at least, so I believe. But I have said all of this before, and I left you, gentle pages, sweet unwitting, at a most unfortunate place.

Erik had just removed his mask.

All the horror that had drained from me earlier returned with a dizzying force at what loomed above me, what hovered not half a pace away from my own face. Hideous, terrifying, vile... all terms that may have been used, but fail to comprehend it at all. A parted veil of beautiful, thick black hair framed, for want of a better descriptor, half a skull. One half of his face was perfect, a red, cupid's bow of a mouth, a black eye that glittered haughtily at my terror, an aqualine nose. The other half it seemed as if the flesh had suddenly thinned and stretched to paper across the bone beneath, livid with bluish veins and neither lips, nor brows, nor hardly a lid for that one, pitted hole of an eye. His teeth leered whitely from that partial maw, the twisted, scarred remains of something like flesh, and I clasped my hands over my mouth to prevent a shriek. I couldn't shriek, much as I wanted to, I could not allow such a thing. We were past some kinds of pretending, but not others.

"So, we are even." He sneered, and the contempt in his voice almost made me wish I had shrieked, or cursed, or run, or something of the kind. But I percieved that the contempt was largely for himself, and I looked down, abashed.

"I suppose that is so." I looked up at him again, at iit/i, and I shuddered, and he flinched. I could not help it. There are some perhaps who find it simple to look past these things, who cradle deformed cretins in the gutters and shower lepers with love, unafraid of the flesh that rots from poxy limbs and slobbering faces, but those are angles and saints, not real people, and they have the luxury of kindness because they are not themselves monsters. It is easier to look down than up, you know. It could be argued that maybe I-- maybe he and I both-- were not really people anyway, but some other species of monster, but as I said-- it is not the monsters whose hearts open like that, and for the moment, I was slaughtered by the abomination that was his countenance, as surely as he was undone by the more secret abomination below my shift.

"So what happens now?" I asked him, looking past him, at the candles glittering in the mirrors. I sang the words, lilting and hopeful. It is easier to lie in lyrics, you understand. That is what acting is.

And he looked at me. I wanted to strip off the dress, so that I would be as naked as he, so he couldn't ignore the truth of me, hidden in white chiffon and gauze.

"I..." he started, and closed his eyes, "Sing for me." he whispered hoarsely to the vaulted cathedral ceiling of the cave, "Sing."

I rose from the velvet and came a little closer, picking up the mask which lay discarded upon the floor. The Proximity revulsed me, but I had very little choice. I handed him the domino, and he took it from me, flooding me with relief as he tied it back on, covering us both in our repsective costumes, Soprano and Tenor. I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I had done the other thing-- tossed the mask in the lake and stripped out of my gown, if I had forced the reality instead of dwelling in the familiar and comfortable shadow. I wonder, but I know that I could not have. I am not and never have been that brave, no matter what name I have worn. And he accepted my cowardace, being, really, at the end of the day no braver.

And then he went to the organ and I stood beside him and together, we sang. 


End file.
